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Gender Equality in MP Candidacies

No Equality, No Justice!

The practice of the 10% election threshold blocks various social groups from being represented in the Parliament and invalidates the voters’ will. Political parties exacerbate the situation by excluding women.

The practice of the 10% election threshold blocks various social groups from being represented in the Parliament and invalidates the voters’ will. [In this system, political parties that receive less than 10% of the votes cannot join the parliament. For instance, in 2002, as a result of numerous parties failing to pass the threshold, more than 40% of the electorate (14+ million) ended up not being represented in the parliament. Instituted following the military coup of 1980, the threshold was and still is routinely used against parties that do not follow the traditional state lines such as Kurdish rights, and for a time, Islamists. –Trans.]

Political parties exacerbate the situation by excluding women. Of the 4 parties most likely to pass the threshold, it was only the HDP [Peoples’ Democratic Party] that came close to an equal male-female ratio with 45% women candidates. It was also the HDP that nominated women in all the cities of the nation except 3. [In contrast] The AKP [the ruling party, Justice and Development Party] did not nominate women in 37 cities, CHP [Republican People’s Party] in 41 cities, and MHP [Nationalist Movement Party] in 51 cities. Yet, these are parties that have been in the parliament for years and that have been receiving election funding.

Women are everywhere. Yet women are absent in political party nominee lists! We will give neither our votes nor our affirmation to those parties that do not nominate women! We will vote for those who take steps towards equality, liberty, and justice.

Gender Equality in MP Candidacies

In total, only 26.6% of the candidates are women.

In terms of the percentage of women candidates they nominated for the 2015 General Election, the Communist Party came in 1st with 100%, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) came in second with 45%, and the People’s Liberation Party and Anatolia Party shared the 3rd place with 34% each. Of these political parties, only the HDP has a group in Parliament.

[Among the political parties most likely to pass the 10% threshold, only women nominations by the HDP’s exceeded 20%. HDP is currently not the main opposition party in Turkey.]

[Candidates’ chances of being elected decrease significantly when they are not nominated from the first rank of their party. These chances decrease even more if their name is not included in the second rank. Only 9% of women candidates are nominated for the first list by the CHP, MHP, HDP, and AKP combined (pie chart on the left). 14% are nominated from the second list (pie chart in the middle). 77% of the women candidates, i.e. 402 candidates from the CHP, MHP, HDP, and AKP are nominated from neither the first nor from the second list (pie chart on the right).]

The percentage of women candidates did not to surpass 30% in Turkey’s 72 electoral districts!

Political Parties and Independents

Number of Women Candidates

Percentage of Women Candidates

Total Number of Candidates

Number of Electoral Districts

The Right Path Party

86

25.07%

343

56

Anatolia Party

189

34.36%

550

85

Rights and Liberties Party

122

25.26%

483

75

Communist Party

550

100.00%

550

85

Community Party

104

18.91%

550

85

Right and Justice Party

29

19.73%

147

43

Center Party

98

20.25%

484

73

Social Negotiation and Development Party

91

25.93%

351

55

People’s Liberation Party

195

35.45%

550

85

Liberal Democrat Party

86

21.03%

409

58

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)

67

12.18%

550

85

People’s Democratic Party (HDP)

249

45.27%

550

85

Peace Party

42

7.64%

550

85

Republican People’s Party (CHP)

107

19.45%

550

85

Justice and Development Party (AKP)

100

18.18%

550

85

Democratic Leftist Party

117

21.27%

550

85

Nation’s [Yurt] Party

67

20.36%

329

56

Democrat Party

76

13.82%

550

85

Nation’s [Vatan] Party

137

24.91%

550

85

Independent Turkey Party

98

17.82%

550

85

Independent Candidates

15

9.09%

165

46

Total

2625

26.62%

9861

On the 2015 General Elections and the Data

The 2015 Parliamentary Election will be conducted in 81 cities, with a total of 85 electoral districts. 20 political parties formally registered 9,696 candidates with the Supreme Committee of Elections, in addition to the 165 registered independent candidates. These candidacies were published in the Supreme Committee of Elections website. In addition to the lack of categorization of candidates by gender in political party websites, the Supreme Committee of Elections itself has no awareness of gender with regards to the nominations. As such, in order to obtain a 99% reliability rate, whenever in doubt, we researched candidates online and attempted to confirm our findings with the limited number of parties that showed the sensibility to share their data with us.

Update 08 June 2015: According to Lambdaistanbul, women obtained 98 parliamentary seats out of the 550 in Turkey’s June 07 2015 General Elections. Accordingly, the rate of representation of women in Turkey’s Parliament increased by %3.5 from the 24th Parliament, elected in 2011, to 17.8%. In contrast, women constituted 49.82% of Turkey’s population according to the 2014 results of the Address Based Population Registration System.

Translator’s Note: The figures provided in this text have been prepared by LGBTI News Turkey volunteers in the course of the Turkish-English translation of the source text for translation purposes using the raw data provided by the source text. These figures are released under a CC-BY-SA license.